Teacher’s Stabbing Brings Demand for Better Security

Olive Vista Junior High faculty members met with school officials for an hour Friday to demand better security and more district support following this week’s stabbing of a teacher and student brawls on the Sylmar campus.

“We needed to express our feelings; there has been a lot of tension,” said Roberta Bernstein, a counselor and school representative of the teachers union.

“People needed to know they are going to be supported by the administration . . . that they didn’t leave us here as the last outpost in the San Fernando Valley,” Bernstein added.

Principal Charles C. Welsh, Joseph Luskin, a regional administrator of operations, and Marcia Charney, field representative for School Board President Roberta Weintraub, met with about 110 teachers and staff members in the school’s library after classes were dismissed early. Welsh said the school will get more security help.

On Monday, teacher Cynthia Edwards, 37, was stabbed in the back when she called a ninth-grade student to the front of an English class while she wrote out a disciplinary report on the boy for using profanity.

Teacher Hospitalized

Edwards, of Palmdale, is recovering at Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills. The 15-year-old suspect, who is from Pacoima and has had a history of disciplinary problems, has been charged with assault with a deadly weapon and carrying a knife on campus. He is being held at the Sylmar Juvenile Hall.

Teachers said the tension caused by the attack was heightened by apparently unrelated fights between students Thursday and Friday. Adding to the stress was Tuesday’s vote on teachers union contract negotiations, and student progress reports that were due Wednesday, teachers said.

“All these things separately caused tension,” Bernstein said. “All together they caused a great deal of tension.”

Bernstein said teachers told the administrators that the stabbing has made many of them “nervous” about writing disciplinary reports on students. Teachers were also upset by what they felt was the limited response of district administrators to the stabbing.

But Welsh disagreed, noting that two assistant superintendents visited the school and the hospital after the stabbing and that district Supt. Leonard M. Britton also has visited Edwards at the hospital.

The 1,600-student campus normally has one police officer on duty. Several school police officers were on campus Friday and a district task force, designed to counsel students, will be assigned to the school temporarily, Welsh said.

The principal said that additional administrative help will be assigned to school to monitor student activities outside the classrooms.